Happy Snow Day!

First snow day of the year and luckily we made it to the one appointment we had today...really slow, but we made it through. Hope everyone stayed safe and warm!

It's supposed to really get cold out so we stopped by target on the way home from our appointment this morning and tried to find dog booties for Tequila's feet. Normally we wouldn't bother but the last time we had snow and it dipped below 0* his feet got so cold he would just curl up, lay down and look super pathetic. They didn't have dog booties at Target so we went over and bought a couple pairs of baby shoes...this was the end result :)

Too much :) they didn't last long, we'll be taping them to him tomorrow

While Sara worked from home, Brian got more painting done and even used the snow blower to clean off the neighborhood driveways. Take a look at our progress...

Window trim done and the tape is off...best news, they still open! Will finish the last section once the paint settles and we can tape around it.  Nice amount of snow outside :)

Painted the ceiling with 1 coat of ceiling paint, will do more tonight! Looks so much better already!

Another view of the trim...might have to tackle the closet next, still deciding what to do with it. 

It's coming along but there's still a lot of work to be done. We took a quick break this afternoon to do some snow plowing with Brian's new toy...actually our neighbor bought it, but we store it and Brian primarily does the work :)

Trying out the new toy

Not as easy over a layer of ice

Snow is still falling, but here's what it looked like around 5pm

So calm outside

My dapper little dude...caught him actually looking at the camera!

Loves to run

Right before he knocked me over and ran to the creek :)

Wishing mom would let him run down and jump in the creek

Such a stud

It's super icy out there, so be careful! Hope everyone continues to stay warm and we will update as soon as we have more done!

XOXO,

Sara, Brian & Tequila

New Year, New Big Project

We're not Seahawks fans in any way shape or form, but watching Denver get destroyed and Payton have one of the worst games of his career totally made this Superbowl a fun one to watch! Definitely a good time!

It's been a few months since we finished our Kitchen-Main Room remodel and we (ok, Sara) has been itching to start something new. We've been wanting to get a king bed for awhile and figured a Master Bedroom remodel would be just the thing to kick off the new year.

Now that we've had some experience with painting furniture and doing the work ourselves, we couldn't just buy brand new furniture from big chain store so we started hunting for good quality pieces that we could transform. I can't wait to show off some of our finds, but I will keep that to another post. I can say that we are going to be tackling one of our biggest pieces yet, and it has already proven to be a challenge.

We've been using Sara's grandparents old furniture that we inherited when we moved into the house, but like most of the house, it's stuck in the 70's and wouldn't paint very well.  Here's how the room looked before (don't mind the mess...we live here, and we are completely removing everything):

The old bed, all one large massive piece....Tequila knew something was about to happen to his other room

A decent size closet but not functional at all...and a total disaster

A whole lot of brown going on

The dresser...the mess gives it a little extra something

Another shot of the bed...still a sad puppy

These curtains were from and old bedding set we had...not a fan, but they kept it dark when needed

Random hooks...these were all over the house and they are in there pretty good...can't wait to get them out of here

I'm only showing a picture of our dusty fan to show off the gold flecks in the popcorn ceiling

Tequila showing off his handy work...found the only two squares of clean carpet without dog hair, and yes this is after vacuuming earlier this week. I love my BBD even if he is molting

So you get the picture, pretty hodge-podged together and in total need of a deep clean...but it makes it even more fun to redo! Once we got everything (except Tequila) out of the room, both of us agreed that the popcorn ceiling and the gold flecks had to go.

Best tip to removing the popcorn ceiling...clear everything out of the room that you don't want covered in a thick layer of dust, close the door then get to work. Using a spray bottle filled with hot water and vinegar, we started scraping the popcorn down to the dry wall. Don't get it too wet, but just wet enough to help eliminate some of the dust. I won this round because my half of the room didn't need as much sanding, but this was definitely a team effort.

Tedious but worth it in the end

Yes, Sara did the back end of the room

Even Sara's mom came over for the party...and to give Tequila some Grandma hugs

After all the sanding, letting all the dust settle

Sanding is definitely the messiest part, and it takes several hours to let the dust settle, clean up what you can and let it settle overnight to get the next layer. Make sure to keep a window open and all the doors shut or you'll end up with an entire household of thick dust...trust me, I know from experience and have learned from it. :) But you will still have a lot of residual dust and debris that comes out of nowhere for a couple weeks. All worth it.

Then we decided to tackle the trim and the windows so the paint had plenty of time to set before we taped for the walls. We are not using Impervo this time, we are using a new type of paint that was recommended to us that has similar qualities but it's oil, but before I share the name I want to make sure that we love it. Already I'm loving the white trim! We started by wiping down the trim with TSP and then started with the primer.

First, 2 coats of primer

First coat of paint

Best part of starting with the trim, you can be messier and do less taping!

We also started painting the doors since we had the paint out

The room already looks better with 2 coats of primer and the first coat of paint. We will tackle finishing the ceiling and the walls once the trim paint and dust settles more and we wipe down everything. It was pretty messy 2 days, but we did get a lot done. We'll update our progress as we go, but now it's time to relax!

XOXO,

Sara, Brian & Tequila

Couldn't resist this sad face (and yes that is a shark costume)

Happy Holidays 2013

It has been way too long since our last post! We will be finishing up our tutorials and remodeling posts soon, but for now we wanted to wish everyone the Happiest of Holidays! We are so fortunate to have such wonderful family and friends, we can't wait to spend time with you all!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

Rock Chalk!

Not everyone was excited to take pictures :)

And since we have done so much work to the house this year, we thought we would dress it up for the holidays. Enjoy :)

A view of the main tree

Dining Room

DIY Wreath

Christmas tree in the main room

Mantle shot

Decorations everywhere :)

Even Tequila has a stocking...and yes, sports are always on at our house :)

I love glass jars

Another view of our main tree

Wedding album

Sara's favorite decoration from her parents/grandparent's house

Had to give the island some love too :)

From our family to yours, lots of love to you and yours. Happy Holidays!

XOXO,

Sara Schorr

Kitchen Island DIY - How we created our dream kitchen island for under $80 (Part 2)

Welcome back to the second half of How we created our dream kitchen island for under $80. I just updated some of the photos because apparently this page was down for awhile, so I apologize for any delays.

We left off with Part 1 where we cut down and started painting the cabinet section of our new island. The next piece of the puzzle was determining how big we wanted the island to be. For me, I wanted the island to be the center and showpiece of our kitchen and our home. We spend so much time in the kitchen and I never have enough counter space. In order to measure out how big we wanted the island to be, I needed to decide what I wanted to do for one or both sides. After looking at several photos online, I decided I wanted some sort of bookshelf on one of the sides to hold cookbooks, photos, kitchen items, etc. and the other side to be pretty open for seating.

Then I stumbled upon Ana White's Modern Craft Table and loved the three sided bookshelves she used as legs. Since I wanted one side of the island open for seating, so we only needed one and figured I could convince Brian that building just one would be a cinch!

Now before we could get building, we had to plot out where the island would go and the best length of the side bookshelf. We had the space to bring it out about 4.5 feet and I figured, go big or go home!